Russian Muslims are protesting the situation in Myanmar. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is laying claim to a separate regional foreign policy based on the defense of Muslims abroad. It is a broader phenomenon than that and reflects the distinct identity of Russian Muslims and the failure to build a proper nationalities policy in Russia.

Between the nation and the empire there lies the term ‘civilization.’ Russia will be doomed to build its identity on the archetypes of civilizational loneliness (an imperial feeling) as there is no system to build itself into to obtain guarantees of further existence.

Islam is one of Russia’s four traditional religions – faiths with longstanding presence in the country. Unlike many European countries, where immigration contributes to the growth of the Muslim population, Russia’s Muslims are local people, long-established populations with ethnic traditions reaching centuries back.

Last year’s incident with the Russian Su-24 jet instantly changed the very nature of Russia-Turkey relations. What used to be viewed by the leaders of the two countries as a strategic partnership was replaced with harsh confrontation.

Moscow has made the largest progress in Eurasian integration with Armenia. It has had no integration plans (given numerous constraints) with regard to Azerbaijan or Georgia. Yet Russia’s victory cannot be regarded complete or unequivocal.

Significant terrorist acts in Russia and the United States usually have the same effect. The same thing happened as recently as last spring, after the terrorist attack in Boston, as a trail was found leading back to the Caucasus.

While previously developments in the North Caucasus were primarily looked at from the viewpoint of inter-ethnic relations and regional policies, today this theme has expanded to a pan-Russian scale. It is not Chechnya, Ingushetia, or Dagestan per se that matter; rather, it is how the Russian heartland perceives those regions.

Georgia was the first sovereign state to recognize the genocide against the Circassians. However, the recognition did not occur all of a sudden; certain steps were made back in the 1990s by parliaments of the North Caucasian republics.

There can be no “national” solution to the Caucasus in that a number of ethnic disputes and irredentist claims overlap presently demarcated territorial state borders. Moreover, the membership of these states in either NATO or in the CSTO is not panacea either, in that membership in these separate military camps and command structures, even if these camps can be aligned, would not work to better integrate the entire Caucasus region.

Among the respondents favoring Chechen secession only a very small number believe that Chechnya should be entitled to independence by virtue of its right to self-determination. Remarkably, these respondents have Russia’s interests in mind (“It would be better for Russia”), not Chechnya’s.

If America, with its power, influence, capabilities and share in the world economy proclaims itself "First", it thereby sets the tone. So everyone will have to follow it and also to become "first of all." It's hardly worth to be glad about it. But we must be ready.

A few weeks ago, as we planned our coverage of Russia’s election, my colleagues and I at Kommersant, a Moscow-based daily newspaper, discussed whether we should prepare an overview of the foreign policy proposals of all eight candidates running for president. I argued it wasn’t worth it. What’s the point in analyzing seven programs that have no chance of being carried out?

In early 2018, a remarkable milestone was reached in post-Cold War history: as of February 5, the Berlin Wall had officially been down for as long as it was up. But in contrast to the jubilance and optimism that surrounded the fall of communism, today is characterized by growing mistrust and even open hostility between Moscow and Western capitals as we appear to be further away from the promise made in 1989 by President George H. W. Bush of a “Europe whole and free.”

In 100 years since the Revolution of 1917, it continues to have impact on the Russian society. Divergent assessments of the Revolution and different approaches to its commemoration have been sparking off heated debates on Russia’s past and future that emphasize the need to reconcile different narratives.

Against a background of shifting geoeconomic power from the West to the East, economic nationalism has become the development strategy that allows rising powers to reverse negative asymmetry in interdependent economic relationships.

Before 2014, the majority of Ukrainians did not view the goal of European integration as a “national idea.” Even so, most Ukrainians had positive views about developing relations with and integrating into the EU.

There is a great risk of getting mired in counterproductive discussions about the frontiers of the European model of historical development. References to the history of one region or another or one nation or another as “European” or “non-European” are unscrupulously used today inside the EU itself and along its periphery when it comes to discussing whether the region or nation deserves to be a member of a united Europe.